


A Secret

by talefeathers



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Blood, Gen, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 18:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7000225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan wakes up in the hospital after a near-death encounter with a night horror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Secret

Ronan didn’t think he had dreamt in the time between closing his eyes by the park gate and opening them now, but he kept his fists curled closed until he was sure they were empty. It took him a long time to categorize the things that hit his senses; a fluorescence that made his head ache, something antiseptic that made his stomach turn. His forearms felt like they’d been pumped full of lead, sore and heavy, tightly bandaged. His mouth was dry.

He compared these fragments and found the answer they all fit into: hospital.

“Ronan?”

He turned to put a face with the voice, then closed his eyes again when the movement sloshed his brain around painfully inside his skull.

The voice made a small, suffering sound.

Ronan took a deep breath in through his nose, pushed it out through his mouth like smoke. Another breath; in, out. He opened his eyes.

“Gansey.”

It did not look like Gansey. There was something wrong about the way he sat, hunched with his elbows on his knees, the heels of his hands holding his head up by the temples. There was something pinkish and distant about his eyes.

“Why?” Gansey asked, low and level. “Why this?”

Ronan blinked. _This?_

“What?”

“Don’t,” Gansey said. Still without looking at him. “Don’t play dumb with me. Please. Noah found you in a pool of your own blood with your wrists torn open.”

With a deep pang of guilt, Ronan realized what _this_ was. He saw what the bandages on his wrists looked like without the context he could never give, especially against the backdrop of Niall Lynch’s murder.

“It’s not like that,” he said, because it wasn’t. Maybe he couldn’t give Gansey the whole truth, but he wasn’t going to lie.

“Then what is it like?” Gansey finally looked at him, all pain and questions. 

Ronan only looked back and wished his eyes could explain what his voice wouldn’t.

Gansey sighed. He dropped his head into his hands again.

“I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me,” he said quietly.

Ronan swallowed.

 _Yes you can,_ he thought. _You do._

“It won’t happen again,” he said. “I promise.”

Gansey was silent for a long time, and Ronan was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t heard him.

“You promise?” he said at last.

“I’d cross my heart if I thought I could move my arms,” Ronan replied.

“Do not make fun of me,” Gansey said, but he was smiling, and all at once Ronan found it easier to breathe.

“Quit making it so damn easy, then,” he said, leaning back against his pillow and closing his eyes again.


End file.
